Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

How would you answer this Christmas question -

A myth?

Some kid conceived with Mary’s other boyfriend, hushed up with some holy dream story?

An ordinary man with a good moral message?

As a Christian, I believe this Child is God, who took on flesh and dwelt among us, who entered our world as helplessly as the rest of us do, who bore our sorrows and took the punishment for our sins, in order to redeem what went wrong in Eden, and to restore us to our Father who loves us.

If you celebrate Christmas, may it be merry.

Whether you do or don’t, joy, peace, and blessings to you in the new year.

Last night The Hanshaw Trio recorded our guitarist Craig’s tune “Cherry on Top.”

This is the tune with a syncopated A part — a lot of the accents fall one eighth note before the downbeat, so that it’s easy to lose the feel for those downbeats, tempting to shift them ahead a bit and lose the syncopation. Fiddler Jerry and I both struggled with this, but in different places. Then the transition to the unsyncopated B part always throws me off a little, and it’s hard to get the expression and timing of my part just right. That and my hand hurt last night.

Still, it’s been a fruitful and rewarding experience to put a trio version of this tune together.

A few times at past sessions, while waiting for something to save, Craig would start playing the tune and Jerry would improvise some long sustained notes over it. I may have tried a few things myself, although I think I hummed them rather than trying to play them.

With some difficulties — because of that syncopation and because I’m not really a guitar player — I managed to transcribe something like the tune, and draft some preliminary fiddle and dulcimer parts.

We talked through some arrangement ideas, put them on paper, and played with them last night, adjusting and refining and adding as we went.

Guitar starts alone. Fiddle comes in with a long sustained note and a little run. At the B part, dulcimer replaces fiddle. Second time through, it’s everybody. Third time on the A part, the dulcimer part gets fuller, mixing melody and response parts. Then we cut to an alternative B part — at first it was going to be just guitar, but we added some dulcimer bass stuff — then a single strum, a pause, and back with a bang to the regular B part with everybody, closing with a slight fiddle slide into the final note.

It’s one thing to decide how to do something, and another to actually do it.

After trying a few times to run the whole thing, we decided to do three takes without that pesky fiddle run. Then on a new track, we worked on putting those runs back in with the right timing. I think I did something wrong on each take, but maybe with editing we can put something smooth together.

Later.

I have one more “gig” — playing the offertory in church this Sunday (”Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” with Camille on flute) — and one more recording session on Tuesday (Craig’s tune “Cherry on Top”), and then that’s it for this holiday season.

It’s been a nice full one this year, starting with the weekend craft show at Mom’s Place in mid-November. The busiest time was the weekend before last, when the trio had two gigs in Corning (about nine hours including travel and a dinner break) and then a gig near Albany the next day (about twelve hours for that one, yikes!).

Though I’m a little sad to be almost done with playing for a while, it’ll be good to have a break.

For one thing, we can get back to the trio CD. I’ve burned copies of what we’ve got so far for me and the guys to listen to and evaluate. I think I need to revisit some of the mixes — many seem to need more volume on the guitar and some need more dulcimer, too. I’ve also started thinking about possible track orderings, and I’ve been experimenting with traycard designs. At some point I’ll have to think about how to actually make the booklets and traycards — maybe buy software and paper myself, or maybe see about having them done at a local printer.

By the way, here’s a track list, in alphabetical order for now:

• Banish Misfortune / Swallowtail Jig
• Carolan’s Welcome
• Cherry on Top (© Craig Higgins)
• Down the Brae / Ballydesmond Polkas #2-3
• Dubuque / Spootiskerry
• Hills of Lorne
• Irksome Girl / Midnight Maze (both © Marcy Prochaska)
• O’Keefe’s Slide / Derrane’s / Trip to Durrow
• Out on the Ocean / Morrison’s Jig / Kesh Jig
• Star of Munster / Old Copperplate
• Staten Island / Julia Delany
• Winter East and Kensington (© Marcy Prochaska)

For another, it’ll give my hands a rest. I’ve been dealing with an inflamed tendon in my left hand since October or so — tuning and playing the dulcimer aggravate it a little. I’m not convinced the dulcimer caused the problem, but there might be ways I can adjust my methods to be easier on my hands.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the nail side of the tip of my thumb sometimes hurts while I’m playing; when I demonstrated the dulcimer for my physical therapist, she noticed that I tend to overarch the left thumb. I think this has to do with the finger-flick technique I use to compensate for being right-handed. By flicking the back of the hammer grip with my ring finger, I can get a clearer, stronger sound. Having a big arch in my thumb seems to help with that technique, perhaps by providing a nice shape for the hammer grip to rotate around, which seems to also help me keep the hammer from wobbling sideways. Perhaps there’s a way I can be more aware of that thumb — maybe I can keep it arched but not overarched, and keep it relaxed and not rigid.

Or perhaps I can train my left hand to do what my right hand is doing.

Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest

I love going to the UPDF each September.

This year the highlight of the festival for me was having a whole day of interesting classes with Dan Landrum (which has its own blog entry).

I also enjoyed seeing friends and meeting new folks, jamming, and the hospitality of my gracious and fun hosts.

Dan and I in this first picture. Below are my hosts Fred and Sarah on the left, and on the right are Don, Joanie, Butch, Christine, Nick, and Christie standing, with me and Kitty seated. Unfortunately I don’t remember all the names of the folks in the final picture.

(Can you tell I forgot to scan these until after I’d already cropped them and stuck them in my scrapbook? Guess which one overlaps Dan on the album page…)

 

A few other things

Also in September, our pastor hired The Hanshaw Trio to play at a presbytery dinner featuring a lecture on arts and the church.

In October, I celebrated five years of dulcimer with an anniversary concert at Cornell’s Johnson Museum. (See the concert flyer in another blog entry.)

The show began with the duo Pas de Deux, and closed with The Hanshaw Trio.

Then there was a surprisingly gorgeous day in November when a bunch of us got together to jam at the farmers’ market.

Here’s Rick Biesanz who books for the Peaceful Gatherings Coffeehouse in Corning and singer-songwriter Joe Crookston.

In the second picture, that’s Debra Chesman, who runs a jam and house concert series near Corning, Rick, Joe, and Gary Kline, a fellow Rick plays with in the Seneca Moon String Band.